Dr. Michael Harris went to work for a few hours yesterday and tackled the administrative chores he normally hates.

His life-threatening hepatitis C made it impossible for him to see the young cancer patients to whom he’s devoted his life. It would be too exhausting for him in his weakened condition.

But Harris, 61, didn’t want to sit around his Englewood, N.J., home accepting calls from well-wishers while he waited for word that someone had died – making a lifesaving liver transplant possible.

As he looked at numbers on his office computer screen, he confided that he would rather be spending time with the patients at his famed clinic, the Tomorrow’s Children Institute at Hackensack University Medical Center.

He was referring to his hope for a liver donated by the family of someone who has just died or is near death.

“He wants to get better so he can treat his patients,” explained his wife, Freida.

No one who knows Harris doubts that.

News of his illness – reported in The Post and other newspapers yesterday – triggered a flood of calls and e-mails, said the doctor’s secretary, Anne Kreminski.

“A lot of people want to donate their livers,” she said. “But he can only take a liver from a family member” if there’s a live donor. That’s the law in New York state, where Harris is on the donor waiting list.

Harris has refused to accept a live donor because he doesn’t want to put anyone else’s life at risk.

And he doesn’t think he can count on the donor waiting list. The average wait is five years and many don’t survive that long.

So he is hoping for a direct donor – a liver provided by relatives of someone who has died in an accident or is near death.

Harris contracted hepatitis in 1986 when he pricked his finger while drawing blood from a patient at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.